Any Moment Now

 

Claudia Quatey (PIX 11 News)

Happy Mother's Day.

All across the land, mothers are being feted with breakfast in bed and brunches and peace and quiet and whatever else they want and very much deserve.

If my mom were still alive I imagine we would have somehow gotten together with my sister and had a peaceful day of food, laughs, grandkids, and great-grandkids.

So I wonder how Mother's Day is in the Quatey house in New York City today.

No, scratch that. I know how it is going. I can't say this with 100% certainty but I would imagine it's not happy.

You see, Claudia Quatey is a 16-year-old who was in the old "wrong place at the wrong time" in Queens Wednesday night.

Kids were playing in a nearby park when a discussion between two groups turned violent.

Then it turned into gunfire.

The kids in the park ran for their lives as the sound of "pop pop pop pop pop" rang out.

They apparently got home safely, leaving behind a sense of innocence and fear for their safety. 

Claudia Quatey was in a car getting ready to go out with a friend because she was interested in braiding hair, according to her father.

Wrong place at the wrong time.

A bullet hit her in the head.

She's fighting for her life at Jamaica Hospital.

But you know all of this, right?

You know it because AOC has tweeted it. Al Shapton has organized a march. The President has mentioned Claudia in a speech to highlight gun violence. 

Surely Jemele Hill and other celebrity activists have spoken out?

What about Shaun King? He always has something to say.

That would be no.

Now, to be clear, the local TV channels and New York newspapers did stories. But Google Claudia's name. Search Twitter. There are a few other stories but, mostly, there are crickets.

But, let's review AOC for a moment. Come on, now! Life-long New York City girl, right?

Oh, right, except she conveniently moved to the suburbs (Shrub Oak, about 10 minutes from Mahopac) and graduated from Yorktown High School. She seems to selectively ignore that.

But she's a city girl. So, she'd be all over this, no?

No. Big no.

I mean, she's just one example.

I guess my question is ... why?

Because, as of now, there's no evidence of an assault weapon? No AR-47 we can point fingers at?

Because, as godawful as this is to say, it wasn't bloody enough for outrage? It wasn't a random mass shooting?

Surely this must gall journalists-turned-political assistants around Town Hall that normally retweet outrage at all of this.

But it must not fit the agenda for some reason.

Someone else will post it on their social media because, hey, this is right up their alley. Oh, who am I kidding? Agendas. Minimal attention to a story that has a father saying, clearly, "“My daughter is fighting for her life right now.”

Pretty disgusting. 

This isn't dirty enough laundry.

I see a beautiful young woman who just wanted to braid hair or whatever it was she wanted to do on a Wednesday night in Queens.

Still, to me, New York City is the greatest. Obviously, it doesn't seem so great when things like this happen.

Especially when the city goes mostly quiet.

The same one that gets outraged when other things happen.

Comparisons aren't necessary. I'll leave that to you. My concern -- my own outrage -- is for Claudia Quatey, whose life is sadly either over or disastrously changed.

And the outrage is silence.

And I find that outrageous.

I'm as powerless to change this as I am to change shooting in Texas or anywhere else.

Ponder that.

Happy Mother's Day.